Inventive and surreal

I Am Radar is as easy to enjoy for its swaggering tragicomic spirit as it is to admire for its celestial ambition

Big, beautiful, ambitious… His prose is addictive and enchanting

Larsen has wit, intelligence, empathy and imagination. What he turns his clear gifts to next promises to be fascinating

Chameleonic, ambitious, epic, fantastical, whimsical, thought-provoking, arcane, philosophical, exhaustive, and completely bonkers — these are just some of the words that could be used to describe I Am Radar… Unquestionably one of the more adventurous entries into the literary landscape

One of our most highly anticipated novels of the year

I am Radar provides oldfangled delights. Larsen can describe humanity at its worst…but his lightness of touch and enjoyably complex characters keep you hoping for the best

Larsen has wit, intelligence, empathy and imagination

Balances exciting stories with celebrations about the powers of electricity and political art.

Gripping ... masterly ... Larsen is an effortless magician, and his performance here is a pure delight

The much-travelled Osborne delivers on a load of levels, not least his characters, who can ooze silky menace, or be totally soulless, desperate or lost. All are convincing in the setting of the exotic, once-deadly country. And with his easy and vivid descriptions, this masterpiece will give you prickly heat rash

Dramatic and involving, an exhilarating adventure crafted in crisp, sharp prose. Osborne gives us rich swathes of local colour … Most of all, it is Robert and his precarious fate that keep us rapt. On the first page he is described as having ; "the aura of poverty about him"; roughly two hundred pages later his beloved Sophal tells him he is spooking people: "They say you have an aura of disaster about you." He does and it’s powerful; once the novel’s momentum kicks in, we’re with him all the way until the bitter end

Mesmerising

The man making writing dangerous again

Very fine...an excellent addition to the literature of personal displacement. Grappling with manifold questions about identity and the tragic futility of material aspirations in a ruthless, brittle world, this novel draws you into a sun-struck realm where the survival of the fittest is more predicated by chance and where violence is a sudden, opportunistic enterprise

The best writer you’ve never heard of, Osborne is hitting mean form as a writer of exotic literary thrillers. … Sensual, dream-like and gripping

This is an elegantly told story that will keep you intrigued until you hit the back cover

An atmospheric read

It’s with expert control of the narrative here that [Osborne] captures a life adrift

Dark, teasing, elegantly written book

Darkly sinister, threatening and compelling, this is one you’ll come back to again and again

Alive with malice and grace, this is a taut tale reminiscent of the nightmares of Patricia Highsmith

Prey and predators circle in lush southeast Asian settings that gleam with Osborne’s dazzling skill as a travel-writer

It shines with intrigue, with investigations into the nature of the non-rational, and evil, wrapped up in taught plotting

One of Britain’s most accomplished novelists.

An ingenious and atmospheric novel.

Lawrence Osborne is an experienced, competent author with an impressive knowledge of Asia… Comparisons with Graham Greene seem to be generously offered by other reviewers and I’ve already alluded to Conrad and a Patricia Highsmith yet my impression is that Mr. Osborne has a style all of his own.

McCarthy has put his finger on something, and he’s nailed it very precisely. It’s how we live now. All the information we process every day. What it’s doing to us.